Page 122 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

be “generally hostile to the Polish state” and ripe for agitation by the Soviet-backed Communist Party

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of Western Ukraine.

What is striking, however, is the extent to which police reports suggested that national

identities could not be understood in isolation from the social and economic functions that these

people played in local society. Indeed, understanding peasant behavior seemed to be much more

closely linked to the general vulnerability of local populations to destabilizing external influences

than to a flattened category of nationality that depended on what language a person spoke or where

they worshipped. The state police reported that the problems they encountered—crime, support for

bandits, and the spreading of rumors, to name just a few—could be linked to internal economic and

even familial dynamics within rural communities that often rested on ever-changing local

circumstances. If in Ostróg county, the population was “indifferent” to those charged with policing

the border, in Równe county the mood was described as “hostile,” a difference attributed to the fact

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that in the latter county, smuggling brought “enormous profits” to local people. In the villages,
crimes were also frequently reported to be the result of conflicts between peasant families from the

same “national” group. Some murders were revenge attacks against rival families, while acts of

arson—of which there were 47 reported cases in the second quarter of 1924—were generally,

although not exclusively, explained as the result of “revenge and the settling of personal accounts

among the local population,” as well as “disputes between employers and workers,” which were not

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described in national terms. Alcohol was not infrequently involved when it came to fist-fights

72 “Sprawozdanie miesięczne z ruchu zawodowego, społecznego i politycznego na terenie województwa
wołyńskiego za miesiąc lipiec 1924r.,” DARO 33/4/7/70od. On Soviet support for the Communist Party of Western
Ukraine, see “Sprawozdanie miesięczne […] za miesiąc wrzesień 1924r.,” DARO 33/4/7/263od.
73 “Sprawozdanie miesięczne z ruchu zawodowego, społecznego i politycznego na terenie Województwa
Wołyńskiego za miesiąc czerwiec 1924r.,” DARO 33/4/9/118.
74 “Sprawozdanie sytuacyjne za II-gi kwartał 1924r.,” DARO 33/4/9/83.

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